Nancy C. Andrews, MD, PhD
Photo: Nancy C. Andrews
Elected 1998

Dr. Andrews is Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Boston Children's Hospital.  From 2007-2017 she served as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. She obtained her Ph.D. in Biology from M.I.T. and her M.D. from Harvard. She did her housestaff training at Children’s Hospital Boston and a pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship at Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute before joining the faculty. Prior to moving to Duke she was an HHMI investigator at Boston Children's Hospital, the George Richards Minot Professor of Pediatrics, and she served as the Dean for Basic Sciences and Graduate Studies at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Andrews' research laboratory focused on molecular hematology, mammalian iron homeostasis and mouse models of human diseases. Her group identified several novel proteins involved in normal iron handling through positional cloning of spontaneous mouse and rat mutations associated with iron deficiency. They used gene targeting to disrupt iron-related genes in mice, to interrogate the details of iron homeostasis and to develop mouse models of hemochromatosis. Using these models, they have elucidated the roles of the iron-regulating hormone hepcidin in the pathogenesis of hemochromatosis and the anemia of inflammation. Her group also identified the gene responsible for iron refractory iron deficiency anemia (IRIDA). Dr. Andrews is a member of the Association of American Physicians, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She previously served as Chair of the Board of Directors for both the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and currently serves as Home Secretary for the National Academy of Sciences.  She on the Boards of Directors of Novartis, Charles River Laboratories and Maze Therapeutics.

Honors / awards

National Academy of Sciences (2015)
American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2007)
National Academy of Medicine (2006)

Society service

President, 2008–2009